Clubs holding onto their cash - agent

Premiership clubs will bide their time before plunging into the transfer market this summer as the money men keep a tight grip on the purse strings.

That is the view of top agent Jon Smith as the close-season progresses with little activity on the transfer market outside David Beckham’s sensational move to Real Madrid.

Tottenham Hotspur’s £8.25m (€11.9m) swoop for Portuguese striker Helder Postiga today is one of few big money deals yet to be completed so far, although the return of most clubs for pre-season training in the next week or so should increase the tempo.

However, while Smith believes that much of the caution currently being exercised is a result of uncertainty over just how much money respective managers will have at their disposal, he is confident that the cheque books will eventually be opened.

But that could depend in large part on Europe’s Competition Commissioner Mario Monti, who is currently considering the implications of the way in which the television rights for the English game have been carved up.

“The biggest problem is Mario Monti with regard to the television deal,” said Smith, of First Artist plc.

“The clubs have no idea what their income from television is going to be. That’s having a major influence on our industry, and until that situation is resolved, I think many clubs are going to keep their hands in their pockets this summer.

“One or two are starting to take them out now, and there will certainly be movement. If you remember last summer, things didn’t really start to get going until August, and my view is that it will probably start to get busy in late July, August.

“Big clubs like Manchester United and Newcastle may move beforehand, but a lot of clubs have to offload players before they can buy – and don’t forget that people don’t get paid after July 1 if they’re out of contract.

“I don’t have a worry about the long-term, but in the short-term, I think there’s a lot of financial juggling to be done. There will be a lot of balls in the air, and not all of them footballs.

“It’s not much quieter than last year. People tend to forget that a lot of business didn’t happen because of the World Cup last year. There wasn’t a lot of activity initially, but things then started to move, and I think it will be the same this year.”

Mr Monti, the man who oversaw the recent changes to the transfer system, is concerned that the £1.3bn (€1.88bn) three-year deal which handed BSkyB its rights to Premiership games could be unfair to the smaller clubs.

The arrangement means that most matches are not shown live, and there is a school of thought that suggests that the rights for those which are not covered could be sold on.

But in the meantime, the uncertainty remains, and that could become increasingly difficult as the closure of the August transfer window looms.

“The problem is that the television issue may not be sorted out within the confines of the window, and until there is some clarity in that respect, a lot of clubs will not want to spend until they know what their income will be,” said Smith.

However, Mr Smith does not subscribe to the theory that the current financial trough into which many clubs have been pitched is necessarily of football’s own making.

“The problem is fairly well-documented,” he said. “We, as an industry, were the recipients of £1.3bn (€1.88bn) for three years, and it was spent within 18 months.

“After September 11 and after ITV Digital (a £170m (€246.1m) deal with Nationwide clubs which collapsed a year into its three-year term) the banks have decided that there is no forever-extending credit to football and there’s a finite sum of money available.

“That’s the way the world economy has gone and football can’t be impervious to it. We’ve lived on Planet Football for a long time; now we’re back on Planet Earth and certainly, we’re part of the general malaise.”